Note that this quotation above has no bearing to what will be posted today. I just saw this quote alongside a piece regarding that a**hole Marcos, so I thought what the heck - Frank Herbert (creator of the classic Dune series) said it.
Today's topic is going to be another artistic rant. If that idea turns you off, Void, then by all means - I banish you! Ha ha ha... Nah. Please stay. I was only kidding. Lets get down to business shall we?
After a rousing three-part series of posts aimed at helping me build my confidence in digital painting, I feel that I a failure. Yet again. This time, it has something to do with perspective. As you can see in the image above (I drew and painted that!), the perspective is lousy. I don't know what went wrong. I followed the whole line rules to achieve a nice distance effect, but the whole thing turned out awful.I realized my mistake later on - its a mistake I've known for quite a while actually - "proportions". Now why the heck didn't I think about that? Uh... I don't know... Maybe you were too distracted with real life or something? Bah! In any event, I made this image far too angly for its own good, and now it looks horrible. To top it all off, my line art is a mess. Hmm... The only way I see in improving this is too *gasp!* make STILL-LIFE PAINTINGS!! Aaaaaaaaaaugh!
F**k this perspective sh*t! Here's my second attempt. This time, i tried to stick with a concept:
If I were to make an original story, what and where would it be set in?
I pondered this very thought for 15 whole minutes. Can you believe that? I could've spent that time laughing at my pathetic viewcount! But no. I wanted to do something new and creative (for the first time ever, in some cases). So I tried to conjure up images of my most inspiring movies of all time.
I could only imagine the amazing vistas of Ridley Scott's Blade Runner, Luc Besson's Fith Element, and the fantastical bits of from the Heavy Metal adult comics. I also imagined a setting which made extensive use of airships. Why these helium-filled deathtraps? I don't know. All I know is that Hayao Miyazaki may have had something to do with it. That man and his freakin' airships and steamcrafts and whatnot...
So I tried sketching the overall concept. It was going to be a science-fantasy type setting, with impossibly huge towers filling the sky, with scientific towers and shopping districts and crap. The lower and mid levels are for the burgeoning masses. Yeah, yeah - you've heard this before. But hey, if you ask me, nothing beats the ol' classic juxtaposition of poor and rich elements. Now that I think about it... The Frank Herbert quote may have something to do with this after all.HAHAHAHA. How pretentious. Forget I mentioned it. I began this painting with "value"/balance checking - to see if there was harmony in the thumbnail...
Note that on the three image above, there are "two versions" of the line-art images. I figured that the bridge where the blimp lands was too short on the middle image, so I decided to expand it. I also increased the size of the blimp so it would be a focal point or something. But then, I took a closer look at both versions... And somehow, I felt that I liked the middle one more! It conveyed the vertical cramp-ness that I liked.
I began adding coloring. The difficulty lay on the fact that the my line art sucked ass. It was too sketchy, so I had to think of a way to hide it. Easier said that done, as you can very well see. Why? Why?? This foolishness has gone long enough...
The final product is uh... Ah what the heck. I say its a good first attempt, after not having painted in a while. It's got a million problems in it, but I'm happy. As an exercise, its kinda worthless because I knew what my faults were already, and I failed to act on em'. But this is still pretty good in conveying the idea I wanted for a setting in a sci-fantasy story. Yeah... I wonder if I make a story about this girl that lives in this place as a uh... uh... a window washer for the rich folks?? And she uh... she lives in this particular district where a lot of poor people live... Yeah! And the story will be about her life in this impossibly fantastic setting. The aim of the story is to disgust you in its filth. Yeah!Forget it.
Well, like my art or hate it, go and watch this classic cult 'toon from the 80's. It's Heavy Metal, that's what it is. Try coming up with stories starring jerks like that!
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